Barcode wristbands have been used in hospitals for identifying patients when a barcode wristband is worn on the wrist of a patient. Since reading a barcode requires line of sight, medical staff has to contact the patient hand in order to read the barcode. This not only presents inconvenience but also increases the contacts between medical staff and the patient. These direct contacts between medical staff and a patient should be avoided as much as possible, especially in contagious medical cases. In addition, barcode is a read-only media. Once a barcode is printed or affixed on a wristband, the content which it represents can not be changed or appended.
RFID is a possible solution to overcome the difficulties described above. In theory, reading a RFID tag does not require line of sight. When a RFID wristband (a wristband with a RFID tag affixed) is worn around a patient wrist, the wrist may be in between the tag and the reader; in these circumstances, the reader will not be able to read the tag or not reliably because the wrist is mainly made up by liquid (blood) and absorbs most of RF energy from the reader. In addition, secure access to data on RFID is needed.
There is a need to read/write a RFID wristband from all angle, and a need to read from and write into data on RFID securely such as a RFID wristband.